Unplaced/Invaded: Multiculturalism in Helen Oyeyemi's The Opposite House

Abstract

This essay will explore how Oyeyemi’s novel operates as a treatise on multiculturalism and its failures to promote equality through diversity for the black population in particular. Diversity is allegedly valued by multicultural discourses in Britain but The Opposite House problematizes the type of multiculturalism developed in British culture and politics where aspects of this form respond to the patterns of immigration specific to Britain as a former colonial power.